Accidents, incidents and small issues

Are you planning on accidents?

 

Only the megas use DAC, smaller companies can't afford it / don't care.

 

If you have an accident/incident its not impossible to find ajob, but you will have to explain...Hitting a trailer is 1 thing. Driving over the fuel pump is another...Just depends.

 

Okay good. To answer your question, there are tons of drivers out here with accidents and incidents on their record whom are still employed. It may slim up your options but anything is possible. Bigger companies are forgiving because of high turnover rates, well at least thats how it was at my last company. I have found smaller companies to be even more forgiving. Everyone screws up every once in awhile. We're all human, we make mistakes.

Just don't make a habit of it.

 

There are certain things that will make it near impossible for you to find another job. A few off the top of my head are flipping a rig, DUI, and a fatal accident where you were at fault. As far as marks on your DAC and small incidents, they don't matter as much as you might think unless your littered with them.

I just got a job with a good company hauling fuel locally and my record is not clean. I know people who've flipped trucks, fell asleep and ran into a ditch, pulled out of a dock with a forklift driver still in their trailer, etc. etc. There are always companies that will have work for you, but it definitely won't be that gravy train job.

 

There is no driver shortage.

Please take the time to research this industry falsehood and disabuse yourself of it. Here are a few thoughts about this myth to start your research.

There is government money to train new drivers... this incentivizes industry players to perpetuate the driver shortage myth.

Training/starter companies exploit the government supply of subsidized new drivers by offering low starting wages, long "training" periods where the "student" is used as a second log book, then some even subject new drivers to months long forced teaming of two noobs in a truck at the rate of one experienced driver.

Many of these new drivers have no skin in the game as their training was paid in whole or in large part by someone else, so they do not carefully consider what they are getting into.... after all, it costs them nothing to quit.... so they do before they complete a full year, as they are expected to do (as if by design).... so there will be a another crop of government subsidized students for all the players to make money from all over again.

If there was a shortage of drivers, there would be more freight to move than available trucks to move that freight. To get your freight moved, the price to move that freight would on average go up.

The opposite is true. The nationwide average for dry van freight is down to $1.50 per mile, excluding FSC from over $2 mile less than a year ago.

The "driver shortage" myth has been around through many, many freight price cycles..... more than two decades? I've heard such, but have no hard facts as to when the myth began.

But don't let this discussion discourage you from trucking. There are many ways to make money with a truck, and if you do it right, it can be a lucrative and rewarding career.... just please, stop perpetuating this myth.... it is for the benefit of companies looking for cheap labor....

Next they will be saying the "driver shortage" is so serious, we need to import drivers from oversees to do the driving jobs Americans don't want to do.

 

In my first year I broke a small tree almost taking down some power lines and caught my bumper on one of those short yellow poles and am still employed with the same company.